Decoding Digital Modes with an SDR

Time for some more fun with the SDRplay! I usually have to leave my HF rig & power supply on to decode digital modes. Well it’s required obviously if I want to transmit, but I wanted to be able to decode signals w/ my station without having to consume much power for a ‘receiving’ station. With nothing more than a low power PC & an SDR of some sort (even the RTL_SDR’s work for something like this), you can effectively listen for digital modes, decode them, and have your data uploaded to the PSK network/WSPR network, etc. You’d be surprised at how well your $20 SDR dongle can pull in signals, give it a try!

Virtal audio cables make this all possible by allowing digital audio data to be passed from one application to another without any loss of signal. Pretty cool stuff eh? I have a goal one day to be constantly monitoring ALL bands for digital modes. For now, this is a good start 🙂

On a side note… I finally figured out why I haven’t been able to use my screen capturing software (OBS). A wide screen 34″ monitor is no easy task for any PC to try & capture, so I swapped monitors on my Mac Mini & my Windows machine & voila! Screen capture works like a charm now! So now my panadapter will be on the smaller screen, but this makes better sense to have my ‘SDR’ computer with a lighter load as far as my GPU goes. I even noticed a slight decrease in CPU & GPU usage when I switched over to the smaller monitor. But now I can share tutorials and SDR operations much easier! So bigger isn’t always better with a panadapter screen – lesson learned!